Karl von Clausewitz, the stern old Prussian philosopher of war, had it right. War is politics carried on by other means. He didn’t see fit to expand upon the apparent corollary, that politics – which most modern thinkers want to sell us as the alternative to war – is simply war carried on by other means, but it strikes me as at least as valid. Check the bitterness, the sense of the world threatening to come to an end if the other side won, the willingness to believe the worst about the adversary and overlook the flaws of the chosen champion, in some cases the outright hatred that characterized the political campaign just past.
War at its most fundamental is about the possession of territory and the resources it can yield. Politics is also about command of resources. A good part of the reason politics has become so bitter in these latter days of partially acknowledged empire is that government and politics command so many of the resources of the people, so much more is at stake, or perceived to be at stake. The ersatz issues that the media and political managers bring to the surface – gay marriage, abortion, morality, competence, steadiness, ability to think in a complex manner – cloak the real stakes.
One set of people who have devoted their lives to seeking power – real power, the power to send others to their deaths, to control the distribution of the systematic looting called taxes, to punish others for having the wrong opinions or the wrong values – have it, and another set of people who have sought power with equal devotion don’t. It’s not as if the losers of the election will be sent to the gallows or burned at the stake if they lose. But they have devoted so much of their lives to the pursuit of power that they have come to believe it is of paramount importance, that to be without it – even if life is otherwise pleasant and even plush, as Mr. Kerry’s certainly is – feels rather like death.
It is profoundly sad that struggles for the baubles of power should feel like life and death to so many people. But politics thrives on promoting conflict, on division, on setting one against the other. Every political contest is fundamentally about control of resources, just as every war is – although side issues like pride, prestige, and the debilitating fear of looking weak or indecisive get mixed in, sometimes to the point that most people think they are the real issues. If it takes promoting hatred and division to control the resources, perhaps that’s not quite the same as killing others for them, but the two tactics are part of a continuum.
It is likely, then, that war will be a part of our lives as long as politics is so much a part of our lives. When we move beyond politics – it’s an intellectual and psychological process first, and difficult to begin, let alone to achieve – then perhaps we will have a chance to move beyond war as well.
But most humans are far from even thinking in such terms, and there’s a here and now that has a great deal to do with the apparent inability or unwillingness of the administration to think clearly about the relationships between politics and war.
Desperate Attacks
There are people who believe the attack on Fallujah demonstrated an understanding of the use of war for political objectives. The argument is that so long as insurgents/rebels/terrorists/whatever are allowed to maintain physical dominion over a territory claimed as part of the territory ruled by the government – you know, the legitimate one – then the government can never have the credibility it needs to hold elections that are said to grant the same legitimacy as the divine right of kings was said to grant some centuries ago. So, to improve the interim government’s chance to become at least legitimate enough in appearance that it doesn’t have to rule by unremitting force every minute of every day, it is necessary to go in and get rid of the insurgents, to neutralize the threat they pose. The political objective is eventual perceived legitimacy, and the way to get it is to use military force to break the back of the rebellion.
That’s a way to understand that ultimately the objectives are political, and military force is only one means – perhaps the only available means – to achieve those objectives. I suspect, however, that this is an overly simplistic and shortsighted way to look at the political objectives putatively being sought in the assault that began this week.
The administration/occupation/interim government spokespeople have been vague in public about what the objectives of the attack on Fallujah are, beyond killing insurgents, and given the haphazard way the occupation has been carried out, it is quite possible that even in private they do not have clear political objectives in mind. Judging by certain things I hear on talk radio and read in letters to the editor at our newspaper, there is a certain segment of the American population that adopts a breathtakingly bloodthirsty faith, all the more shocking for being so casually expressed and apparently unthinking, in the capacity of destruction per se to make things better. "Just nuke Fallujah," some will say. "Why not level the place to show ’em we mean business?" "What’s this hands-behind-our-back concern about civilian casualties? Won’t that hold us back? We need to get serious [i.e., overwhelmingly brutal and bloody] to let them know resistance is futile."
I hope that among the upper echelons of command there is a slightly more sophisticated attempt to identify political objectives and think about what means are most likely to achieve those objectives. But it’s hard to find solid evidence. One is almost inclined to think the attack on Fallujah is a desperate move undertaken in the hope – a naive faith, which would almost be touching if it weren’t so destructive, in the capacity of overwhelming military power to solve all problems – that it will decimate the insurgents, rather than as part of a strategic plan to reduce their influence on a more long-term basis.
What Objectives?
In the absence of clear political objectives articulated by our putative leaders, let’s assume they have some. Whether they want to lay the groundwork for a draw-down of U.S. troops reasonably soon (say within a year) or simply want to lay the groundwork for a long-term occupation that is not characterized by dozens of attacks a day on occupying forces, the political objective in Iraq, presumably, should be to reduce the number of insurgents, to reduce the number of attacks, as the first step toward restoring some semblance of normal life in Iraq, so that people will see cooperation with the government, participation in the upcoming election, and abiding peacefully by the results as a better way to get what they want than making improvised explosive devices and trying to kill Americans and those who cooperate with them.
Admittedly, that’s a bit general and could be broken down into a number of sub-objectives, the achievement of which would make the achievement of the larger-scale objectives more likely, depending on the situation on the ground.
If the objectives somewhat resemble the preceding, how likely is the attack on Fallujah to contribute to them?
Consider some background, some of which has been outlined by Fred Kaplan on Slate.com. The first question to be asked is whether clearing Fallujah of insurgents is really the key to peaceful elections. Fallujah is one of the strongholds of the Sunnis, who were generally favored under Saddam’s regime but are a minority in Iraq as a whole. Among the reasons for Sunni resistance (there are surely others, including diehard loyalty to Saddam, foreign terrorists coming into Iraq and the like) is the expectation that in an Iraq-wide democratic election, the majority Shi’ites would probably win and the Sunnis would find themselves under the Shi’ite thumb – a thumb perhaps made more oppressive by open and clandestine assistance to Iraq’s Shi’ites from Iran’s Shi’ite-dominated theocracy.
Any Political Moves?
Now one could certainly argue that firing RPGs and setting up roadside bombs is something short of a perfectly rational and efficacious response to such a perceived threat on the part of Iraqi Sunnis. But have the interim government and the occupying forces done anything at all to try to convince the Sunnis that their fears are baseless?
How might one try to reassure Sunnis that they would not be oppressed after relatively honest democratic elections? One can imagine urging Shi’ite leaders like Grand Ayatollah Sistani to offer assurances, to speak clearly about the specific constitutional mechanisms that will protect minorities from being stepped on, to devise a strictly limited central government that will have little power or incentive to repress minorities.
Those assurances might not be believed, of course. But it would seem important, from a political perspective, if the objective is a reasonably peaceful country sometime soon, at least to think about offering them, to work hard to devise ways to make assurances credible. As far as I can tell, nothing of the sort has been done. Instead, the response has been to announce that if they don’t submit they will be obliterated, which is hardly a persuasive argument that once a permanent government has been established it will be kinder and gentler.
I have little doubt that the United States (and the few Iraqis who participate) can bring enough firepower to bear in Fallujah to at least assume relatively effective control of most of the important sites in the city. But the evidence to date suggests that (as usual in this war) it won’t be as easy as advertised, and it will have little ameliorative effect on the level of violence in Iraq as a whole.
Fierce Resistance
Much of the resistance by insurgents has been quite fierce. Insofar as U.S. troops have advanced fairly quickly in some areas, it has almost certainly been because many insurgents have fled to fight another day. Meantime, attacks in other parts of Iraq, notably Baghdad and Mosul, have been timed to coincide with the attack on Fallujah – so effectively that some troops have actually been called away from Fallujah to deal with them.
Perhaps most upsetting (at least they should be) have been highly coordinated attacks in Samarra. U.S. and Iraqi troops supposedly pacified that city last month, in an operation that in military circles was touted as a model for how to deal with Fallujah. But if a "pacified" city experiences coordinated attacks a month or so later, just how effectively pacified is it? How effectively pacified can we expect Fallujah to be?
In short, although U.S. and interim government leaders went into the attack with the fond hope that it would at least begin to break the back of the insurgency, it hasn’t (indeed it may have fueled more widespread insurgency). U.S. military leaders (who, if you can get them in candid moments, are usually more realistic than political leaders and official spokesmen) are now conceding as much.
Bigger Problems
Let’s add just a few more factors. It is considered defeatist in some circles to point this out, but an attack like the one on Fallujah, which has already led to massive destruction of buildings and at least some loss of civilian lives – it could take weeks for the full extent of civilian casualties to become known – will serve as a recruiting poster for al-Qaeda and whatever other jihadist groups, foreign and domestic, are now operating in Iraq. Does it make sense to kill hundreds or even thousands of insurgents if it leads to the mobilization of several new insurgents for every one killed?
The Fallujah offensive coincides with news that the "coalition of the willing” is being decimated and the United States is increasingly alone when it comes to the heavy military lifting. Hungary has announced that it is pulling 400 troops from Iraq. This comes on top of news that Spain (1,300 troops), Poland (2,400), the Netherlands (1,400), Thailand (450), the Dominican Republic (302), Nicaragua (370), the Philippines (51), Norway (155), and New Zealand (60) have withdrawn or are in the process of withdrawing troops from Iraq. Singapore, Moldova, and Bulgaria are expected to reduce the number of troops committed there. The numbers are not large, but the symbolism is significant.
It is not uncommon to hear, especially in neoconservative circles but often well beyond them, that "those people" – whoever the chosen and by definition barbarian enemy of the moment happens to be – only understand force, and the only way to deal with them is to crush them brutally. People who say such things are all too often holding a mirror up to themselves. As a way to achieve putatively political and sometimes even ostensibly humanitarian objectives, they see force as the first and sometimes only option, even when some are shrewd enough to pretend to lament this unfortunate truth.
Force first. It’s hard to see how this expands the realm of civilized behavior.
